Events

The Discourse of Artifacts and Things with Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop

The Discourse of Artifacts and Things with Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop

June 4, 2015

10:30 AM - 12:00 AM

This morning session will be about the order of discourse of found objects and the performativity of things that create a representation of settlements and cities in history. The history of Mesopotamia and its Ancient cities will be the focus of both thinkers and researchers; Professor Zainab Bahrani and Professor Marc Van De Mieroop. Methods, preservation, politics and the discourse of artifacts will be discussed.

Zainab Bahrani is the Edith Porada Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, New York. She has published extensively in the area of art history and theory, aesthetics and politics. Her most recent book, The Infinite Image: Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity (Reaktion/University of Chicago Press, 2014) is based on her 2010-2011 Slade Lectures in the Fine Arts at Oxford University and won the Trilling Book prize for 2015. She is also the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including awards from the Getty Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Marc Van De Mieroop is Professor of Ancient Near East History at Columbia University. He has also taught at the University of Oxford and at Yale University, where he obtained his
PhD. He is the author of many articles and books on various aspects of the history of the ancient Near East, on ancient Egypt, and on World History. They include, for example, A History of the Ancient Near East, A History of Ancient Egypt, and Crossroads and Cultures: A History of the World’s Peoples. He just completed a book manuscript entitled, Philosophy Before the Greeks.The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia, which will be published by Princeton University Press.